Friendship: Appreciating Differences

LISTEN, I READ
BOOK: YUCK, A LOVE STORY
AUTHOR: MARIE-LOUISE GAY

How can playing together foster friendships and build community? The student will discover and explore the key elements of friendship and how friends add to a community. They will also learn about building healthy friendships, friendly behaviour, difficulties in friendships and mixed-gender friendships. What does it mean to be a good friend? How am I a good friend?

Update (May 2, 2012)

We discussed the importance of being a friend and how to get along with others. Students also talked about how to resolve conflicts on their own and how to create friendships. They learned about the qualities and characteristics that help to contribute to a good friendship - valuing themselves and appreciating the differences and similarities of others of a different race, background, age, size and ability. We focused on rights and that all people are equal and have the right to be treated fairly and shown respect. We reviewed how we can apply what we learned about forming friendships with friends, family, neighbours, classmates and other people in our community.

We focused on these 5 questions and created a “friendship quilt” and created “recipes for a great friendship”

Who can be our friends?
What things make kids friends with other kids?
Can you identify what characteristics are important in a friend?
What does a good friend do?
What skills help people make friends?

Update (May 23, 2012)

On May 10, our grade 1 class met and spoke to the author Marie-Louise Gay over Skype. It was a great experience and an honour for the children to speak to this author since we have many of her books in our classroom library. We had a chance to ask her a lot of questions and she explained to us how she creates her books. In this particular book 'Yuck, a Love Story,' she illustrated the pictures. We spoke to her about how she illustrated this book and the specific techniques and materials she used. The students were also very happy to find out from Marie-Louise that 'Yuck, a Love Story' has been written in many other languages. The grade 1's then had a chance to talk to Marie-Louise about their own projects they were working on. This book plus many of her other works have inspired many classroom conversations and art projects. Since we have a diverse community, this book has helped us celebrate our differences as well as embrace our similarities.